The reserves of indium are extremely small. Any new use that would increase demand would also increase the price. Also that price is for commercially pure indium. After indium is purified enough to be usable in semiconductor devices the price increases many times, possibly much more than 10 times.
Currently, the major consumers of indium are all the screens for monitors, laptops and smartphones, which use indium oxide as a transparent conductor, then the LEDs used in lighting and indicators. Also the power devices with gallium nitride contain indium, and their use is increasing.
There exist no mines of indium. Indium can be obtained as a byproduct from the extraction of other metals, primarily from zinc mining, but its concentration in zinc minerals is very small.
In order to produce more indium, one also has to produce more zinc, in an amount several orders of magnitude greater than the amount of produced indium. When the demand from indium will exceed that available from the current zinc production, further increases in demand will increase the indium price much steeper.
Except for indium, among the other chemical elements only for the platinum-group metals there is a so great mismatch between the amount that would be required by potential applications and the amount that is available on Earth. Selenium and tellurium are also close of these from this point of view.
Well if it's used as a thin film on screens, it wouldn't require much more production to make a few square centimeters more for chips to build a computer to use that screen.
We also ramped production of those screens without some major supply chain problem requiring 10x zinc production.
Currently, the major consumers of indium are all the screens for monitors, laptops and smartphones, which use indium oxide as a transparent conductor, then the LEDs used in lighting and indicators. Also the power devices with gallium nitride contain indium, and their use is increasing.
There exist no mines of indium. Indium can be obtained as a byproduct from the extraction of other metals, primarily from zinc mining, but its concentration in zinc minerals is very small.
In order to produce more indium, one also has to produce more zinc, in an amount several orders of magnitude greater than the amount of produced indium. When the demand from indium will exceed that available from the current zinc production, further increases in demand will increase the indium price much steeper.
Except for indium, among the other chemical elements only for the platinum-group metals there is a so great mismatch between the amount that would be required by potential applications and the amount that is available on Earth. Selenium and tellurium are also close of these from this point of view.